Great Social Networking Tips from a Master

The other night I was scouring the Internet for some instructions for exporting contacts, etc. from Palm into Macintosh applications. I’ve been doing this for several months so it was with absolute relief and GLEE that I stumbled upon a very friendly, clear and amazingly accessible way to accomplish this. The wizard behind my solution is Dave Taylor and he deserves to have incredibly deserving of having as many people know about his work as possible. So he graciously agreed to a Q&A, so here we go.
A little background: Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is widely recognized as an expert on both technical and business issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed. Dave maintains four weblogs, The Business Blog at Intuitive.com, focused on business and industry analysis, the eponymous Ask Dave Taylor devoted to tech and business Q&A, DaveOnFilm.com, a film blog, and The Attachment Parenting Blog, discussing topics of interest to parents. Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs.
Here’s part one of my Q & A with Dave . . .Leslie: A lot of PR people don’t know where to begin when it comes to social networking. (I know, dear readers; you may be saying, “Speak for yourself, Leslie . . .”) But with all of your connections to various social networking sites (I counted at least nine on your Web site) you’re clearly a master. How did you get started and how many networks should someone use?

Dave: I’m tempted to say “all of them”, but even I don’t connect to everyone, everywhere. I think that different networks tend to attract different audiences or communities and the ones you should use are a function of whom you seek to find.
For example, if you offer IT services, there are specific social networks and online sites focused on your target customer community. Should you skip that and hang out on Facebook instead? Definitely not!
On a day to day basis, my most important networks are Twitter (both professionally and personally: @FilmBuzz and @DaveTaylor) and Facebook. I have accounts on many other sites, but they require less interaction and many of them only surface every few weeks when someone sends me a query or contact request.